Human Is to Wander - Paperback

by Adrian Lürssen (Author)

If we are always at war, is all poetry then war poetry? Adrian Lürssen's Human Is to Wander is a book of dislocation, migration, and witness at a time of war--but whose war, fought where, and at what costs to whom? Born and raised in apartheid-era South Africa, Lürssen migrated to the U.S. as a teen in order to avoid military service at a time when the country's authoritarian regime engaged in a protracted, largely unknown war in Angola. Years later, as a father of young children in his adopted country, echoes of everything his family thought they had left behind has returned: endless bloody conflicts on the horizon; an alarming rise of authoritarianism and nationalistic fervor; pervasive racism, inequality, and daily violence in a country whose mythic promise was once held as freedom, equality, opportunity.

Author Biography

Born and raised in Apartheid-era South Africa and then Washington, DC, Adrian L?rssen now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Fence, Posit, the Boston Review, Phoebe, American Letters & Commentary, Witness, 580 Split, and places elsewhere. He is the author of the chapbook Neowise, from Trainwreck Press.